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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Royally pissed

A guest post by Y. Bloch
I was born in a nation which had thrown off the shackles of His
Britannic Majesty 201 years before, and as an adult, I moved to a
country which had done so 51 years prior. I'm not a fan of the British
monarchy, but I have nothing against them either. I am mystified by the
obsession with the heir to the heir to the heir of the throne and how
brilliant, I am sure, his poops must be. After all, they're just
figureheads, right?

Who
was Alan Turing, and why should you care? Well, imagine if Albert
Einstein was capable of doing math. If you're reading this, you owe Alan
Turing, without whom the modern computer would never have existed.
Also, the Nazis would probably have won without his code-breaking
machine. And then there was the Turing test, which may help us prevent
the RIse of the Machines by figuring out when they achieve true
artificial intelligence. But if you're OK with killer robots,
typewriters and the Third Reich, you could have done without Alan
Turing.

That is, after all, what Her Majesty Elizabeth II's
government decided. The Crown prosecuted Turing for "gross indecency,"
i.e. having sex with a consenting man, in 1952. The case was Regina v. Turing and Murray. Guess who that Regina was? Yup, Lizzie Deux, long may she wave.

Turing
was given the choice of chemical castration or prison, and he chose the
former. Two years later, at age 41, he committed suicide with cyanide; a
half-eaten apple was found next to his corpse. It seems that Professor
Turing had an obsession with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, especially the part with the Wicked Queen, disguised as a Witch, who uses a poisoned apple. I guess that was just a coincidence.
So
Alan Turing gets a pardon on Christmas Eve, by Her Royal Mercy (not
Justice, mind you). But he was not the only revolutionary
scholar-teacher to catch a legal break this holiday season: our old
friend Moti Elon (whom I've written about before here and here)
got quite a gift from the Magistrate's Court in snowy Jerusalem. Though
he has been convicted of two counts of indecent acts against a minor,
he won't serve any jail time: he gets off with 6 months of community service.

After
the sentencing, Elon said that he “happily accepted” the community
service, wryly noting that has already been serving the community for
years and “will be happy to engage in public service until I’m 120 years
old.”

So, his community service will be preaching.
Maybe the Knesset will pass a bill preventing him from teaching minors.
Maybe the Rabbinate will strip him of his title. Or maybe he'll be
pardoned. Who knows?

It's certainly not encouraging what Rabbi Haim Druckman, one of religious Zionism's most prestigious figures, has done. He has given him a job teaching at his own yeshiva,
Or Etzion, where Elon will be in exactly the same position he was at
Yeshivat HaKotel when he molested two 17-year-olds (indicted for both,
convicted for one): teaching recent high-school graduates. Druckman
states:

I don’t believe there is anything in his Torah
lessons that is not kosher, there is no reason not to learn from him or
listen to Torah lessons from him.
At the end of the day, we’re
talking about an incident in which two people were in the room, Rabbi
Elon and the complainant. There was no one in the room apart from them.
This person claims one thing, which the other denies. There’s no other
testimony [on this incident]. Who says the claim is true? No one knows
what happened in the room and no one can know. This is why I saw the
ruling as a mistake.

Got that, everyone? The ruling
is wrong because there are no witnesses. Druckman's message: rape away,
rabbis, as long as no one's watching. No arrest, indictment, conviction
or sentence can ever make us doubt you.

Pure as the driven snow

For
the sake of full disclosure, I will note that I studied at Yeshivat Or
Etzion and taught at Yeshivat HaKotel. Technically, Elon was the rosh yeshiva while
I was there, but he was under the bizarre semi-excommunication dictated
by the Takanah organization, headed by Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, rosh yeshiva
of Yeshivat Har Etzion. (I studied there for the better part of a
decade.) Needless to say, this whole affair has seriously affected the
way I think of all three, albeit to varying degrees.

Now, people
often ask me why I, an Orthodox rabbi, write in defense of homosexuals
(or they just tell me that since I do so, I can't really be an Orthodox
rabbi). The answer is right in front of you. What happened to Alan
Turing is vile and disgusting, and it is not that distant from our
experience. The queen who just pardoned him is the same queen who
prosecuted him. The fact that he was a once-in-a-generation genius, the
fact that he was a war hero, the fact that he had consensual sex with a
19-year-old--none of it mattered, because GAAAA-AAAY! That's why I get
up in arms about bearded rednecks who use their limited understanding of
the Bible to condemn gays as the source of all immorality and sin (without letting those uppity black folk off the hook); that's why I enlist to fight the supposedly enlightened rabbi-doctors who are calling us to "continue to wage the war" against the gays and those "who might accept them, and treat them with respect and understanding."

It's
the only way to fathom the shocking cruelty shown towards Turing all
those years ago; I would argue that it also goes a long way to
explaining the shocking leniency shown towards Elon now. Once you
classify homosexuality as sickness, it's easy to say that Elon had a
bout of it, but now he's all better. Only through the lens of homophobia
can you discount both the consensual, mutual romantic relationship
between Turing and his adult paramour in 1952 and the coercive,
vindictive rape committed by Elon against his underage victim fifty
years late. I do not want to be in that bigoted camp under any
circumstances. It's not about mercy, Ma'am; it's about justice, God save
you.

Personally, at the end of the day, I pray for my portion to be with the God of Alan Turing, not the God of Moti Elon.

If it relates to Jews, Judaism, holidays, Midrash,Torah, halacha or anything similar, I probably have a post on it. And if I have a post on it, I probably have a good comment thread with great reader-provided information, too.

Try a search and see for yourself. If you can't find what you're looking for ask me.

Quotes

רֹאשׁ דְּבָרְךָ אֱמֶת קוֹרֵא מֵרֹאשׁ דּוֹר וָדוֹר עַם דּוֹרֶשְׁךָ דְּרֹשׁ
Your chief word is "truth"; You've called it out since the beginning. In each generation people interpret You [for themselves] and find [their own] meaning.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd. -Flannery O'Connor

“When in the afterglow of religious insight I can see a way that is good for all humans as it is for me—I will know it is His way.” - R. Abraham Joshua Heschel

I don't accept at all the quite popular argument that the press is responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. The monarchy's responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. To blame the press is the old thing of blaming the messenger for the message. -Anthony Holden

Said behind my back

"...he's trying to show that there are other facets to Orthodox Judaism. That we don't all think one way and vote one way. And he's occasionally entertaining when he's not being mean-spirited" [PsychoToddler]"

"He's witty. He's funny. He appreciates the ridiculous in life, and has no qualms about telling you when he thinks that you're being a moron" [Cara]

" I'm pretty sure [DovBear] is a really great guy who just wants to be able to ask questions and talk about things without the fear of someone claiming he's off the derech or on his way there." [Chaviva]